Searching is a popular topic in the computing world. With users wanting and demanding faster application, increase in information processing speeds, more memory, and smarter computers, searching and a system's ability to return accurate results very quickly is viewed as an important aspect of the computer experience. Some of the recent patents try to address this problem. For example, in the U.S. Pat. No. 7,664,739 “Object search ui and dragging object results” an object navigation system, user interface, and method that facilitate faster and smoother navigation of objects are provided. The invented, the system can generate a plurality of objects that can be rendered on a display space that spans a single page in length, thereby mitigating the need to navigate through multiple pages. The objects can also be viewed in a film strip format that is infinitely scrollable. While such techniques undoubtedly make search process more convenient compared to page-by-page navigation through search results, they fail to address the crucial requirement of fast search speed. Another shortcoming of the above mentioned patent is the lack of ability of the invented system to automatically reduced search space based on digital representation of information provided by the user about the object the user wants to find.
Digital image based search was also addressed in the industry. For example, in the U.S. Pat. No. 7,565,139 “Image based search engine for mobile phone with cameras”, the inventors improve user's search experience by allowing him to take a digital photograph of an object, match it with an item in the remote database and provide full information about the object to the user. Key ideas facilitating the search process include doing the initial search on the mobile phone, so that database access overhead is minimized, and sending low resolution image to the server, so that less bandwidth is needed thus improving the response time of the application. Unfortunately this and other search related intentioned we examined do not provide an effective solution in case when exact image or description of the desired object is not available. Conventional search systems display or present search results in the form of a column or list to the user (e.g., see FIG. 1A). This format can be problematic from the user experience point of view for several reasons. The list may span many (sometimes hundreds) pages. Therefore the process of examining search results quickly becomes cumbersome and time-consuming. The user examining search results page by page gets tired and may skip important information. Thus only the item located on the top of the list will get full attention of the user.
A typical example of search results for a consumer product on the internet is shown in FIG. 1A. For illustration purposes we use online product search tool of one of the major retail stores TRAGET. Search for a word “knife” on www.target.com returns a list of 585 items. The search can be refined by specifying more precisely the desired object, e.g. by entering “kitchen knife”, etc. The result however is still a rather long list of “matching objects”. As is seen in FIG. 1B, the user would have to examine upto 277 “kitchen knifes”. This situation is not uncommon for other other widely available products such consumer electronics, a piece of furniture, bicylce, more recently even solar screen, etc. Therefore, a more efficient system and method is needed that can guide the consumer through the search process, that matches his visual expectation and leads quickly to the right object.
Thus, in this invention we address the problem of improving the effectiveness of finding a roughly described object in a large set of similar object. We illustrate the invention using example of search for a knife. It will be obvious from the description presented later in this disclosure that the system and method are applicable for search of any object.